Vandals splashed a church with paint and burglars ransacked a law firm defending Christians in their fight to use the word “Allah,” adding to religious tensions in Muslim-majority Malaysia, police and officials said yesterday.
The Church of St Elizabeth in southern Johor state was splashed with red paint before dawn, district police chief Osman Mohamed Sebot said. It was the 10th church attacked or vandalized since Friday night in Muslim-majority Malaysia, where people of different faiths have generally lived without conflict.
Meanwhile, the offices of the law firm representing the Herald was broken into and ransacked, lawyers said yesterday.
Lawyer S. Selvarajah said that staff arrived at work in the morning to find several locks and steel grill doors to enter the 2nd and 3rd floor offices cut, drawers ransacked and papers strewn on the floor.
He said his partner’s laptop was missing. A mobile phone service provider’s shop and tuition center on the first floor were not broken into, he said.
“Only our office has been targeted,” he said. “It looks like it is an intimidation tactic ... We anticipated something will happen. We are definitely upset about this,” he said.
The incident adds to the tension building up since the church attacks began on Friday night. Eight churches have been firebombed by unknown attackers.
Two other churches were splashed with paint, and another place of worship — a Sikh temple — was pelted with stones, apparently because Sikhs use the word “Allah” in their scriptures.
The attacks followed a High Court ruling on Dec. 31, allowing a Catholic publication, the Herald, to use “Allah” as a translation for God in its Bahasa Melayu language edition. The ruling, which overturned a government ban on the word, upset many Muslims in Malaysia.
Bahasa is the language of the Malay Muslims, who comprise about 60 percent of the country’s 28 million population. It is also spoken by indigenous people of Sabah and Sarawak states on Borneo, who form more than 70 percent of Malaysia’s 2.5 million Christians.
The government, which has appealed against the High Court ruling, says “Allah” is exclusive to Islam and its use by Christians would mislead Muslims. The Christians say they have been using the word for decades, and it is the only word they have for God in their language.
The government has condemned the attacks on the churches and has vowed to uphold the freedom of religion guaranteed to minorities by the Constitution.
The ban is over the use of “Allah” only in published material and not in everyday speech by the country’s various minorities.
Selvarajah said police and staff could not enter the third-floor office, in Kuala Lumpur’s Petaling Jaya suburb, because the door was jammed. He said a camera in the building staircase was sprayed but he could not say with what.
Petaling Jaya police chief Arjunaidi Mohamed confirmed the break-in, saying police were investigating. He said it should not immediately be linked to recent church attacks.
“It has nothing to do with the churches,” he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS